A huge Christmas tree, colorful balloons in the streets and pilgrims to the Church of the Nativity: Bethlehem welcomes tourists again with open arms after years of restrictions under the sign of the pandemic, AFP reported on Saturday.

Thousands of tourists and pilgrims visit BethlehemPhoto: AA/ABACA / Abaca Press / Profimedia

Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, welcomes thousands of pilgrims and tourists every year at Christmas, a tradition that was brutally interrupted during two years of the pandemic, when health restrictions made travel difficult.

Now that restrictions have been lifted from the Palestinian territories and Israel, home to Bethlehem’s closest international airport, the Palestinian city is once again breathing the air of celebration.

“Christmas is a celebration of the city and we spent a lot of time and we made a lot of effort to prepare,” Hanna Hanania, the city’s mayor, told AFP. “We wanted to have an international presence and organized concerts and performances for children with singers from France, South Africa and Malta,” he added.

The streets, shops and stone houses of this Palestinian city, where Christians and Muslims live together, have reopened to foreign tourists, such as James Wittenberger, a 70-year-old American who came from Michigan (Northeastern USA) with his four children. .

Bethlehem, “wonderful city”

“This is a great place. We have been here for three days and the weather is good. “We’re lucky to be here, away from the storm that hit the United States this weekend,” says Paul, his 40-year-old son.

“I am walking through this wonderful city. And I reflect on the fact that this is a holy place, the place where Christ was born. It’s an important place, especially at Christmas,” said another tourist, Canadian John Heaves, 22, from Vancouver.

The owner of a pottery and ceramics workshop, Michael Al-Sirani, is happy to see tourists again in the holy city after two difficult years when many local hotels were forced to close their doors.

“We are starting to feel that after Corona (no coronavirus epidemic) everything is getting better. In addition, tourists started sleeping in the city again,” he said.

“From the beginning of this year, or rather from March, we started receiving tourists and pilgrims from all over the world. The number of tourists continued to increase, reaching a total of 700,000 tourists from all over the world,” Palestinian Tourism Minister Rola Maaya told AFP. (Source Agerpres)